


Bad Luck

by Severina



Category: Live Free or Die Hard (2007)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Community: spook_me, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-01
Updated: 2015-11-01
Packaged: 2018-04-29 07:51:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5120651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Severina/pseuds/Severina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They'd only been there once, on reconnaissance, but once had been enough to tell them that the warehouses seethed with… not life, not that. A rustling dry energy, like cornstalks whispering against each other in the wind. A sense of movement in the darkness. He had stood in the doorway staring into the shadows that the light from the open door couldn't reach and known that something crouched there, waiting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bad Luck

**Author's Note:**

> Written for LJ's spook_me community for the prompt "vampires"
> 
> * * *

Everyone's luck runs out. Even John McClane's. 

Matt just thought it would happen in the middle of a battle. Maybe down at the warehouses, in one of those cavernous rooms with the windows set so high above the ground that they didn't let in any of that life-saving light even at high noon. They'd only been there once, on reconnaissance, but once had been enough to tell them that the warehouses seethed with… not life, not that. A rustling dry energy, like cornstalks whispering against each other in the wind. A sense of movement in the darkness. He had stood in the doorway staring into the shadows that the light from the open door couldn't reach and known that something crouched there, waiting. He'd swayed, head cocked as he listened to that snake rattle sigh from the dark, and had taken two fumbling steps inside before John's fingers had closed around his bicep and tugged him back out into the light.

They never returned to the warehouses.

They knew how to pick their battles. They were a unit. Kowalski's home-made bombs blew holes in their daytime retreats, then John and Matt and a few others searched the rubble and staked what was left. Samuel scouted for safe houses and Father Michael blessed the wafers that lined their windowsills and the religious icons around their necks and sometimes some of them didn't make it back. They all knew it that it would eventually be a lost cause – there were too many vampires and too few humans, because no one wanted to believe until it was too late to turn the tide – but Matt still thought they'd go down fighting, and definitely take a lot of the bloodsuckers with them.

He never figured John's luck would run out on a side street in the middle of suburbia because of a broken fan belt.

"Ten minutes," he said. "Fifteen on the outside."

John straightened from his hunch over the engine block. His eyes flicked to the homes lining the block instead. Sturdy brick and mortar jobs, the kind of houses owned by factory workers and bus drivers who kept their postage stamps yards trimmed and ate their meat and potatoes dinner by four so they could be in bed by ten. But now the grass was knee high and swaying in the breeze. No one inside grumbled around the long hours at work, or tucked kids into bed before settling in front of the tube to watch the game. 

But they both knew that didn't mean the houses were empty.

"Any safe houses nearby?" John asked without moving his gaze away.

"Closest is across the bridge," Matt said, even though John already knew the answer. There'd been more, once. Before the contagion really took hold. Before the vamps biding their time in the tunnels had burst en masse from every subway staircase and every basement access point and every forgotten, half-buried pipe. Before the bloodsuckers destroyed almost every inroad the survivors had made in one long and bloody night. "Shelby and her team."

John slapped an open palm down on the side of the old Crown Vic. It was too far, and Matt knew it as much as he did. The sound echoed in the silence of the street, and Matt sensed movement behind the panes of glass that looked out onto the deserted road. Anticipation, even eagerness floated on the wind. 

"Then we book it," John said.

"Jogging?" Matt asked. He felt the corner of his mouth turn up, met John's eyes across the hood of the car. "Little thing they invented in the '60's?"

"Was thinking more like running, kid," John answered, but his lips twitched as well. It was a shadow of the lopsided smirk he gave when things weren't exactly going their way but he planned to kick ass anyway. "Think you can keep up?"

Matt flexed his fingers and put his back to the row of houses. His shoulder blades itched, but he only stood taller. "Bring it," he said.

This time John's answering smile was more like the days of old.

And they ran. They made it past the cloistered little neighbourhood. Their feet slapped on the pavement, and Matt's chest was a fiery, burning thing. They sped past the hulks of crashed cars and burned out storefronts, vaulted over downed benches and abandoned playground equipment in a tiny parkette. They ran until Matt could barely catch a breath, his side aflame, his hair sweat soaked and streaming behind him, and then he pushed and gave a little more, John a steady, unremitting presence at his side. They ran past a final row of wood frame homes sandwiched between a strip mall and the husk of a gas station, and then they had the bridge in sight. 

And when the last golden sliver of sunlight dipped below the horizon, the doors of the houses and the convenience store and the nail salon burst open and the vampires spilled into the night.

* * *

Matt blinked awake with a gasp.

He was sitting propped against a wall, legs splayed out in front of him. Cold, damp concrete at his back. His arms were pinned above his head, elbows bent. Held. Trapped. He processed it all in the space of three heartbeats, but he still surged forward when the spurt of adrenaline made his heart speed; still came up short when the ropes wrapped around his wrists yanked him back against the dank concrete.

He blinked again, forcing his racing pulse to quiet. Panic wouldn't help. Panic would get him killed. He had to work the problem, that was all. Not much different than finding an error in his coding… except for how a misplaced tilde only meant that the damn virus program would crash, and failure to escape right now would mean being drained by a maniacal bloodsucker until he was dead. Other than that, totally the same.

He drew in a shaking breath, tried to concentrate. The last thing he remembered was the vamps, eyes glinting in the moonlight, laughing as they drew even with them as they ran, their movements effortless, their feet barely seeming to touch the ground. Then… nothing. He must have gotten caught in one of their eyes, and as soon as he thought it he remembered her. Young, long dark hair in a messy tangle around her shoulders, face so pale it seemed to shine. He'd thought that she reminded him of Lucy and somehow she had caught the thought. She had _been_ Lucy for one brief, beautiful moment… and that had been enough to drag his eyes to hers. He'd walked to her calmly, willingly. Handed himself over to the goddamn bloodsuckers. And behind him, John had kept on fighting.

John was always stronger than him.

The thought made his chest ache, and he had to swallow twice before he could speak. "John?"

The room was small, shadow-filled. The hulk of an old broken-down oil furnace near the wall. One window. Darkness pressing against the glass. He tried to still the rising panic at the sight of that exposed window, and then one of the shadows by the furnace shifted and John's voice came out of the gloom. "Here, kid."

Matt slumped back against the wall, unaware that he'd even been straining forward until the back of his head hit the concrete and the strain of the ropes digging into his wrists eased with the lack of pressure. John was here. John was alive. Working the problem had just become a little bit easier.

"Where are we?" he asked. He dropped his voice to a harsh whisper, but even as he spoke he knew it didn't matter. The vamps would be able to hear him if they chose to, and their location wasn't important. But he couldn't help lowering his voice regardless. And… sometimes it was better to start with the small stuff. 'Where are we' was a lot easier to handle than 'how are we going to get free before the bloodsuckers return and go all smorgasbord on our ass'. 

The shadows moved again, and he knew John had lifted a shoulder. "They knocked me out. Woke up here a few minutes before you did."

Matt frowned. It didn't make sense. They'd been fighting the vamps for almost a year. A year of rotating safe houses, boarding up windows and hunkering down behind Father Michael's protection of blessed wafers and holy water when the sun went down. A year of taking down vampire strongholds. In that year they had never once come across human survivors. Not once. "They don't kidnap people," Matt said. "They--"

"Kill people," John finished. "Yeah."

Matt slumped back against the wall. His shoulders were already straining from the awkward position of his arms, and it was suddenly difficult to concentrate. His breath came short at the realization, and he wondered if they'd already bled him. Had the Lucy lookalike bent over his wrist, sipped at the blood from his vein while he was out of it? He struggled to see his bound wrist and only succeeded in wrenching his neck. "We've gotta get out of here," he said.

A half snort, half laugh came from John's side of the room. "Should've known we couldn't win, kid."

Matt frowned again. That wasn't John, the man who put a bullet through his own shoulder rather than give up. The man that jumped out of fighter jets and had knock-down drag-outs in elevator shafts didn't say shit like that. He shook his head. "We can fucking do anything, McClane. You're the one who taught me that!"

"They're too strong," John said. "Humans are… puny. Inconsequential."

Matt opened his mouth to argue, but the shadows next to the furnace shifted again and John moved fully into the thin shaft of moonlight seeping through the window. He stood, and stretched, his arms unbound. He looked strong in the light, vital and alive… and it was all a lie. Matt wanted to look away but wouldn't, couldn't, any more than he could stop his heart from suddenly galloping in his chest. His throat worked convulsively for a moment before he was able to speak, barely a whisper. "John."

John turned his head slowly, so slowly, and the eyes that met his glinted in the light. Matt closed his eyes quickly but he still felt the air move and knew John was there, faster than he should have been able to move... faster than anything _alive_ could possibly move. He felt the line of John's body as it bent over him; shivered at the cold emanating from John's skin. He turned his head, pressed his cheek against the gritty wall and did his best to sink into the concrete; but John only shifted closer, and the fingertips that caressed his cheek were made of ice.

"Relax, Matty," John said.

Matt shook his head. His arms strained against the ropes, but not even the workouts he'd done to build up his muscles at the gym back before the world went to shit – the workouts that John had teased him about – were enough to break their hold. He pressed his lips together to hold back the scream when he felt John replace his fingers with his cheek. Three day old stubble rasped over his skin, and he bucked and writhed because now he knew that stubble would be there forever, and because John's breath smelled of dank basements and musty books and old pennies, and because none of it was fair. The heroes shouldn't lose.

He knew that the vampires liked it when their victims squirmed, had surmised that they fed on the fear as much as the blood, but he still couldn't hold back the shriek when John's cold, wet tongue snaked out to lick behind his ear. 

"Relax, Matty," John said again. Hands wandered down his torso, found the hem of his T-shirt and snuck beneath it. Cold, so cold, but those hands knew what he liked; knew to let fingertips dance over his skin, knew how to pinch and roll his nipples until he gasped and arched. Even like this. "I promise, it'll feel good." 

"No," Matt moaned. He shook his head again – _no no no_ – but somehow he'd stopped twisting away. He opened his eyes to see John hovering above him, and for a moment it was just John. The man who'd manhandled him halfway across the country, convalesced with him afterward, and then somehow become a permanent fixture in his life. The man he loved. Those sea-green eyes blinked slowly, then filled with promise. He relaxed back against the concrete; whimpered softly when one of John's hands swooped lower to cup his cock. 

And oh god, he was hard. Hard and straining against his jeans, hips bucking convulsively.

"John," he murmured.

John smiled. And it was only when he saw the fangs that the hold broke, and Matt threw himself against the ropes, kicked out with his legs, screamed inarticulately into the night. 

But John was stronger than him. John had always been stronger.


End file.
